It is known and customary practice to subject molded articles, in particular blow molded articles to post-molding processing to remove flash and excess material. Post-mold processing such as trimming operations require additional time and resources, increasing overall labour requirements and consequently unit pricing on the molded article.
The incorporation of in-mold operations has the potential to decrease labour costs, and a shift to in-mold processing is evident in the plastics industry. Examples of in-mold operations in common use today are in-mold labelling, such as for the application of labels to consumer goods, and in-mold product assembly, such as for the assembly of articulating structures (i.e. medical syringes).